2002-01-05 04:00:00 PDT Washington -- Attorneys for Zacarias Moussaoui, the only man facing U.S. charges in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, asked a judge yesterday to allow a worldwide live broadcast of his trial next fall.

"Mr. Moussaoui recognizes that the American criminal justice system will be on display for the entire world," wrote one of his attorneys, Edward MacMahon Jr. ". . . Televising . . . will insure that the entire world is able to watch the proceedings and will add an additional layer of protection to see that these proceedings are fairly conducted."

The motion was filed in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., just two days after Moussaoui took to the courtroom lectern to invoke Allah's name in refusing to enter a plea at his arraignment on six counts of conspiring with Osama bin Laden and others to hijack commercial airliners and crash them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Taken together, the moves suggest that Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan heritage, has strong views about the U.S. justice system and wants the world to know them.

"The defendant might want to use the trial as a political forum," said UCLA law Professor Peter Arenella. "It serves his interest to have an international forum . . . especially if he is not particularly concerned about an acquittal."

Federal prosecutors were much less enthusiastic yesterday about cameras, arguing in their motion that they can distract jurors, lawyers and witnesses or cause them to change their behavior.

But at least one former Justice Department official said the Moussaoui trial is a perfect opportunity for the United States to showcase its judicial system.

"We have a criminal justice system we can be proud of, and we ought to display it," said former Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder Jr., the No. 2 official in former President Bill Clinton's Justice Department. "Our nation has an interest in getting before the world the evidence we have against Moussaoui and more generally al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden."

Both sides were responding to a Dec. 21 request from Court TV to broadcast the October trial and pretrial hearings. C-SPAN asked for the same access yesterday.

Cameras are banned from federal courtrooms. But lawyers for Court TV argue in their motion that the rule is unconstitutional.

Moussaoui, 33, was arrested in August after a Minnesota flight school alerted the FBI to behavior they found suspicious. A 31-page indictment charges him with conspiracy to commit international terrorism and three other capital counts as well as two counts that carry life in prison.